Monday, October 22, 2007

For better or for worse (probably for the better), Luscious Verde is chock-full of what my grandmother would charitably call "creative types." That is, weirdos. As such, we have about a million odd in-jokes and other references that are impossible to explain to anyone who doesn't work here. Even harder to explain to visitors are the weird decorations that some of us choose to plaster our workstations. Over the next two weeks, we'll be featuring our Top 10 Oddest Decorations, leading up to our number-one weirdest decoration. Enjoy.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Today's card, from A.K.A. Invites in Potomac, Maryland, has the distinction of being the first hot card of the week, not the day. We know, we know, we have all sorts of excuses for not updating the blog: the dog ate our homework, our car broke down, we lost our fingers in a card-making workshop gone horribly awry. But we'll try to be a little more vigilant in the next couple weeks, at least until the holiday season saps both our creativity and our will to live.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

As the newest addition to the proofreading team, I am finding daily that there is more to learn about the custom stationery industry than could possibly be imagined. While the various rules concerning anything from envelopes to inks can at first be daunting, the ability to shatter traditional stationery conventions and construct almost anything a customer requests is an exciting and challenging aspect to this job.

During my first two weeks at Luscious Verde, I’ve proofread many of these custom orders and attempted to visualize the tangible outcome of a black-and-white proof before me. While the production team toils endlessly to ensure that each order is as near perfection as possible, I realize the amount of hard work, dedication, and passion exacted by every employee at Luscious Verde to make this company work.

Although I have had a plethora of information to process over these past few weeks, the laid-back and friendly atmosphere created by all the employees here makes it easy to transition into this new 8-hour day – that, and the endless supply of coffee. And since I’ve been given the privilege of writing an entry for the blog (mostly because Rob actually has work to do, for once), I have to give a shout-out to Alicia who has trained me in absolutely every aspect of this position with such patience. Thanks everyone!

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Admittedly, this post has nothing to do with custom stationery, but we just wanted to congratulate the Cleveland Indians for their great win over the Yankees last night. We'd like to extend our condolences to Yankees fans, of course, as many of our stores are in the New York metropolitan area. Now, bring on Boston!

Monday, October 8, 2007

Today's (OK, let's be honest -- this week's) hot card comes to us from Fine Lines of Katonah in Katonah, New York, a bastion of all that's stylish. The tree motif was actually supplied to us by the end consumer, and we have to say that the entire thing came off without a hitch. We sometimes forget how often people choose our products for the most special moments in their lives. (Sniff...we're gonna cry.)

Thursday, October 4, 2007

One question we get all the time: I don’t see it in your catalog, but can you print an armadillo on our card? Or the Tibetan symbol for “happiness and long life”? Or how about this cool picture of Bugs Bunny that my daughter drew?

The answers are yes, yes, and, well, probably no. The list of cards we’ve been doing lately with completely custom motifs and custom-cuts has literally been growing exponentially with the release of volume two of our Bar/Bat Mitzvah Catalog. People have been seeing what we’re able to do, and they’re excited about it – and we are too.

But we can’t print copyrighted images. It’s simply a law of the land that we couldn’t print, say, a picture of Calvin doing something inappropriate to the Weezer logo. But we have found a good source of cheap, royalty-free stock images: iStockphoto. (No, they aren’t paying us to write this.)

Say your son is just dying to get a picture of a ferret on his Bar Mitzvah announcement. Go to the Website, type in “ferret” in the search box, and presto! There are at least 150 photos and images of ferrets available for a few dollars each, royalty-free. That means you can send in the picture as a reference, or even have us print the image on his invitations.

So get searching. I think I’m going to be printing this on my holiday card this year.

-- Rob @ L.V. (Thanks to Lindsay for the wonderful drawing at the top of the post.)